Sunday, 25 November 2012

Two Back-country Ski trips

Towards Consett Stephens. pic: Doric Swain

This post has taken a couple of months to get happening,
just mucking around with the damn video. It’s summer, but what a good winter!

I managed two back country ski trips this year, and just as
well, because it was a cracker season with lots of late snow. Both trips booted off from Munyang, and had a
few points in common, but some spectacular differences.

Here’s where we went: the red is the first trip with Tony
Murphy and Karen Darby, the blue track is a few weeks later with my
ever-reliable pirate chum Doric.

Trip the First, late August:

Karen and Tony and I set off up Disappointment Spur trail,
intending to get to Whites River or Schlink.

Skis from the switching yard, weather looked good, so from
just after Disappointment Hut we struck off up a gulley to the Gungartin ridge, intending to skirt
East of the peak and drop down onto Tin.

The switch yard start,

Lunch at Disappointment Cafe. pic Karen Darby

Plans.

The wind rose, a howling westerly, temperature dropped and
the visibility closed in. I was the only one with a GPS but it wasn’t much use
hunting for the broad saddle to hop over the ridge in the near white-out. Karen
began to have trouble with her skins, balling under her skis, so progress
became painfully slow across the boilerplate and sastrugi. Finally with light
fading, visibility only fifty metres or so and a horizontal blizzard, and with
the prospect of the big featureless
valleys ahead of us, we decided to halt and set up the tents for the
night. The GPS showed only 1500m to the hut, but there is no way we would be
finding it in the dark with Karen’s skis slowing her down.

We had a tiny 1-person tent and a small 2-person. At 1,980m, in the
sub-zero dark, digging shelves for the tents and trying to erect them in the
gale with fine snow blasting sideways over the crest of our little sheltering
bump. Then a meal of dried tempeh and nuts as the borrowed tent banged and bowed furiously. It was a long night,
with drifts snow filling in between the fly and the inner, the tent flattening occasionally
in a blast, wondering what would happen if the 2-person tent split. Leaving the
three of us with just a single person shelter.

The next morning, still blasting. Note the snow built up inside the fly.

Tony packing. pic Karen Darby

A dismal packing experience.

Dawn and no let-up of the wind. My inner was squashed in
from the weight of the snow infilled between the two tent layers. Visibility
was still poor but a bit better than the evening before, so after cramming all
our crap into the packs we set out.

As the morning progressed the cloud and
snow lifted, but the wind kept on. There
was a quiet moment when we all traversed
under a massive cornice with a steep slope, navigating between boulder-sized
blocks of snow and ice that had fallen off. Only small, but nevertheless
avalanche debris. Eventually we found
the valley down to Tin and with a little thanks to the snow gods we made the
hut.

At Tin. PicTony Murphy

This was, of course, only lunchtime, so we had
a bite and a cuppa, admired the view of Gungartin (the sky had, of course,
cleared) and then struck off over the pass to the headwaters of the valentine
and Mawson’s beyond that. Good run up toward Bulls Peak, descending due east of
Mawson’s.

Pic: Tony Murphy

A bunch of people were camped
there so we set up tents again outside. Saw some amazing horizontal icicles off
the roof.

Horizontality. Gone next day.

At Mawson's , with Jagungal in the distance

Next day, a spectacular views of Jagungal out or tent doors.
We scaled Cup and Saucer, got some nice shots of Tony’s yellow pack liner, and
dropped back in sweeping turns to
Mawson’s.

The glory of a pack liner against the horizon.

With good weather and fresh snow we
quickly packed and then up over the Kerries, through the section I think
of as Little Greenland, and then down the rolling open valleys to come out just
above Schlink.

Across the Kerries.

Shared Schlink with a group from Perth, including a
Vietnamese guy who was on skis the first
time. These blokes fly out of Perth at
midnight, and then Melbourne/Canberra/Jindabyne/Munyang, all without pause.
Tough stuff. They’d done it for years.

Warm bed, then next morning headed back down the road. I
stopped for a moment for a shot of the
thermal top our Italian exchange student had given me, and then off
along disappointment spur trail. I
encountered again the tree that blocked
the path and again underestimated the
height of my pack.

How Jolly!

The pack is taller than I think.

At Jindabyne Tony and Karen split off to ski for another few
days and I headed home. But I would be back…

Trip the second, mid September

Just Doric and I this time, our usual comrade Alex couldn’t make it. You can read Doric’s
account here. And here's his video.

Munyang in a heavy snow shower, which only got worse as we
headed up the hill. Coming over the saddle to Whites was fierce, a deeply unpleasant couple of hundred
metres. The hut’s been rebuilt since it was burned a few years back,
looking very swish with fresh cane-ite sheeting and a paint job. They mentioned another couple had headed off
over Gungartin to Tin that day, which brought back unpleasant memories of the
high blasted night a few weeks earlier. A very pleasant night though, out of the wind, and no rats.

Doric demonstrates the telemark turn. Starting to get silly.

Snowga. The Half Moon. Definitely silly.

Going nowhere. Going to be a long day.

Next day still low visibility and windy but not so much snow
being blasted into our eyes. We trundled up to Schlink. We were first into the
hut but were joined by a party of Cheerful Young Things all being very… Cheerful
and Young. Also some Serious
Photographers. Some bugger had burnt all the wood so Doric and I grabbed some
saws and headed up the hill. Between the ’03 bushfires there’s sadly no
shortage of dead trees.

When we returned there were another couple in the hut: a man
and woman, the latter clearly in
hypothermia and while still lucid desperately needing warming up. They
had been the couple who set out for Tin: without GPS they got benighted in the
gale, and they only had bivvy bags. Hers was (literally) dripping and she had
been freezing and cold overnight. Doric stuck her in his sleeping bag and she
drifted off to sleep. We went and cut more wood and did some skiing in the
whiteout and on return found her awake and huddled over the pot belly.

Turns out she was an old mate of Shaan’s ( I went kayaking
with her and Shaan a few weeks later). Her Guide, and I use the term advisedly,
was ill equipped, overconfident and made
as series of poor decisions that ended up with her in a potentially deadly
situation. Doric and I decidedly underwhelmed.

O to be young in the freezing sleet again!

That night was party night – one of the Cheerful Young
Things was turning 21 and while she was out in the loo her mates pulled out balloons, streamers and party
hats, much Young Cheerfulness when she returned.

Bluebird next day and Doric and I headed up over Dicky
Cooper Bogong, towards the Rolling
Ground, Consett Stevens Pass and Tate. Fantastic views in all directions, to
Jangungal and up to main range as well as out over Victoria.

That grey clump at 3 o'clock edge is Schlink

Makes the Kerries look tropical.

At dusk we set up
camp at a high protected saddle on what
we reckon to be Mann Bluff. All afternoon Doric and I fantasised about coming
back and spending days in this area, exploring and swooping down the long
valleys.

on Mann Bluff

Sensible again.

pic: Doric Swain

Good or what?

One of the best camp sites I have been in in my life. I’ll
let the pix of sunset and dawn tell the story. Most of these pix are Doric's.

Breathtaking. A Scenic World.

Snow dagger at dawn.

Bit of a lazy morning, then dropping down through long swooping
bowls to the Snowy footbridge and eventually Guthega Resort. Cadged a lift back
to Munyang for the car, and thence home to my beloved daughter.

Looking back to the Bluff and Mt Tate

Crossing the River

Great season, great trips ( I didn’t mention the previous
trip this year with Jemma and Giulia the
Italian exchange student, telemarking off lift lines and then taking a day to
goof off in a blizzard up to Charlotte’s). Great company, big thanks to Karen,
Tony and of course the indefatigable Doric, who always has something oblique
and insightful to say.